The Common Origins of Philosophical and Political Power in Plato's Gorgias

Lydia Winn

doi:10.14195/2183-4105_21_1

Abstract

Plato’s Gorgias concerns the tension between political and philosophical power. In it, Socrates and Gorgias discuss rhetoric’s power, which Gorgias claims is universal, containing all powers, enabling the rhetorician to rule over others politically. Polus and Callicles develop Gorgias’s understanding of rhetoric’s universal power. Scholars addressing power’s central focus rightly distinguish Socrates’ notion of philosophical power from Gorgias’s. However, these authors make this distinction too severe, failing to acknowledge the kinship between philosophy and politics. This paper argues that Socrates’ notion of power has its origins in Gorgias’s, but instead of seeking to persuade others, philosophy primarily concerns self-persuasion.

Highlights

Plato’s Gorgias concerns the tension between philosophy and politics, and the power[1] each wields
Gorgias and Socrates come closest to identifying a sphere of knowledge that would enable rhetoric to be considered something like a τέχνη when they determine that it governs matters of justice and injustice
Philosophical δύναμις is distinguished from conventional, rhetorical δύναμις in its self-ref lexive turn

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Plato’s Gorgias concerns the tension between philosophy and politics, and the power (δύναμις)[1] each wields. While the tension between Gorgias’s advertisement and defense is clear, Gorgias’s description of the resulting dangers of rhetoric pose a parallel to Socrates’ own biography as described in the Apology Gorgias concludes his account by claiming that if rhetorical δύναμις is wielded unjustly, it is the individual and not the practice, or the individual’s teacher, who should be blamed: “And, I think, if someone has become a rhetorician and does injustice with this power and art, one must not hate the man who taught him and expel him from the cities. While commentators often interpret Socrates’ following questions utterly to refute Gorgias’s notion of rhetoric’s δύναμις, I will argue that Socrates revitalizes Gorgias’s notion of δύναμις as the greatest good, by insisting that the rhetor’s δύναμις consists in acting justly and by inverting the rhetor’s ambition to persuade others such that the proper aim becomes self-persuasion. Socrates provides a vehicle towards unifying philosophical and political ambitions by reimagining δύναμις as well as the freedom and rulership that δύναμις affords

SOCRATES’ REFUTATION

SOCRATES’ PHILOSOPHICAL POWER

CONCLUSION